NASA leaders expected at Langley on Tuesday

Leaders from six NASA facilities will visit Langley Research Center in Hampton on Tuesday to discuss the agency’s new deep space rocket.

The meeting, which is closed to the media, comes less than two months after NASA announced the Space Launch System, an Apollo-like rocket designed to eventually take astronauts to Mars.

It also coincides with Langley’s first Tweetup — 50 of its Twitter followers will tour the facility, NASA’s oldest, and simultaneously catalog their experience on the social networking website.

Center directors will also tour Langley, though separately from the Twitter followers, Langley spokeswoman Kathy Barnstorff said. The directors will meet with some of the facility’s 3,500 civil service and contract workers.

They also will watch a test drop of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, a Hershey Kiss-shaped capsule that will be attached to the top of the rocket. Astronauts will sit in Orion as it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere and splashes down in the ocean.

The work is the most visible aspect of Langley’s involvement in the new rocket, which is scheduled for an unmanned flight in 2017. Based out of Johnson and Kennedy space centers, the program is expected to cost tens of billions of dollars.